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Moving On

The weekend I found out I was pregnant with Hugh, way back in August 2007, we bought a new car. We’d only been married a few months, and together only a bit longer than that, and the car was our first joint purchase. We ventured out on a Saturday morning, with the intent of getting something bigger than my Corolla hatchback, and more able to carry three people than Dave’s beloved Subaru Brumby. This was to be a sensible purchase, something solid and steady, that would serve us well through baby and toddler years. We test drove a bunch of different makes and models, got increasingly caught up in the excitement of buying a big, new, shiny reflection of our impending family-hood, and ended up with a top of the range SUV, with leather seats, fancy parcel racks and a sunroof. Because what everyone with a new baby needs is the ability to have the Queensland sun beating down onto their baby’s pale, fragile skin, all the while burning their little retinas to a crisp. And babies that grow into toddlers need leather seats to spill the contents of their sippy cup all over. And toddlers that grow into seven-year old boys need special parcel racks to hurl their stinky school bag onto, subsequent to them wiping their filthy shoes all over the back of the leather seats because getting in one door and crawling all over the seats to sit on the other side of the car is apparently a cool thing to do. Every.single.time.

Eight years on, and we decided that it was time to say goodbye to that now not-so-luxury SUV, with its dings and scratches and dodgy clutch and hilariously outdated six stacker CD player. So we ventured out last Saturday morning, with the intention of getting something smaller than the SUV, to be the second car to Dave’s big twin-cab ute. This was to be a sensible purchase, something small and zippy, that would serve us well for the school/work run. We test drove a bunch of different makes and models, and got increasingly caught up in the excitement … You can see where this is going, right?

Ladies and gentlemen of the Internet, I present to you Exhibit B (for this is the second in a series, with Exhibit A now sitting in a used car lot):

At this point, I regret absolutely nothing. Sure, it’s no second-hand Hyundai Getz with low kilometres and a neat interior, but it’s special, and I’m all up for special.

When I was a kid, my family actually didn’t own a car until I was 18, and when we did eventually buy one it was an ageing Falcon station wagon with dull white paint and disintegrating red decal pinstripes up the side. I was never actually allowed to drive the Falcon, because it was so precious, but once when my Dad was in hospital and my Mum was at work, I reversed it out of the carport with the intention of driving to McDonald’s, but my reversing skills were shit (still are) and I veered so badly off to one side that I managed to put a metre long scratch in the driver’s door. After a fairly massive panic, I remembered it was the 80s and I was a uni student doing 3000 word essays on a typewriter, and was thus in possession of a goodly-sized stash of Tippex correction fluid – commonly known back then as liquid paper, which was the same colour and texture as the dodgy duco on the Falcon. I’m not sure if it was fear or the fact that I was high on liquid paper fumes, but my touch up job on that panel was so good that my father never, ever noticed.

In eight years time, when bluetooth stereos are so passe, Dave and I will probably venture out on a Saturday morning, with the intention of getting something with enough grunt to haul around our caravan, and come away with something that the other grey nomads will smirk at behind their hands. In the meantime, if you hear of any jobs going for auto artistes, let me know – I have experience and I need the money.